


an ordinary life, metamorphosis revisited

by Aesops_Corpse



Category: KAFKA Franz - Works, Literature - Fandom
Genre: Explicit sexuality, Gen, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesops_Corpse/pseuds/Aesops_Corpse
Summary: This strange tale was inspired by Kafka's novella, Metamorphosis. I wanted to share Kafka's symbolic tale with my ESL college students in China, but it was too advanced and a little dry for them so I simplified it. It is part of a collection of Halloween cliffhangers crafted just for my students.  I wanted a story they could enjoy without overwhelming struggle. If you never read Metamorphosis, this version provides reasonable fidelity for a modern audience.  It gave me a chance to speak to themes in Kafka's work without sharing the actual somewhat overwritten novella. And if students wanted to pursue the original story they now knew it existed.





	an ordinary life, metamorphosis revisited

Conrad was an ordinary man. He had an ordinary life. Everyday he woke up; showered with a bar of Ivory soap; brushed his teeth with a teaspoon of baking soda and water; plucked his splitting nose-hairs; trimmed his wiry ear-hair; stared at his somber reflection in the mirror, winked with both eyes—hazel eyes, with a little more green than brown; got dressed in a used gray suit he got off the rack at the Salvation Army, the elbows and knees only slightly shiny from repeated wear; looped his green, yellow, and brown paisley tie round his neck; combed his straight brown hair, parting it to the right with a little black comb; kissed on the cheek his mother, father, and incoherent, bristling grandfather, brow bent and pouring over the broadsheets; sipped the hot black coffee, two sugars, waiting on the kitchen table, courtesy of his mother; gave his sister Jules a quick hug, after letting her tie his tie (looping it twice and passing it through the knot and pulling it straight to fasten it firm under his collar); said goodbye to all; and went to work on the number 29 bus.

He bought the Financial Times, the mauve colored broadsheet, at the newsstand on the corner, but not because he cared so much about gross domestic product, private equity, economic partnerships, or real-estate price hikes. He stopped at the newsstand because the old man that sold him his paper, for seventy-five cents, expected him too; the toothless veteran was always happy to see him, and laughed crisply over humorous, odd things that made the news; he commented on the weather, and wished him well. But the old newsman was not the only reason, or even the main reason why he stopped. Next door to the newsstand was a barbershop with a large window that commanded a view of the street. In the window he could see the barber’s daughter, and every morning Conrad watched her shaving her father with an old-fashioned blade that reflected the warm light of the shop. She was a sprightly girl with coal-black hair cropped short, curving round her head, and shaved at the neck. Her fringe hugged her chiseled face and dangled in the eyes, with one springy curl dyed hot pink. Her name was Leandra. Her tender voice was as snow falling on church windows, falling on her shop window. She was peace. 

Conrad earned a meager living. He worked as a research assistant at a marginal law firm in a brown district of the city. One day he hoped to be a paralegal, and someday possibly a lawyer, but he was rather shy, and lacked the confidence. Lawyers need to be smart. He wasn’t smart, his sister thought so, but he didn’t. Everyday, when he arrived at the Old Bailey House, he bought a lukewarm cup of coffee out of the vending machine for fifty cents, proceeded past the secretary’s office, where Sally the secretary stood making photocopies every morning, the glow of the scanner illuminating her florid face. She had big dark eyes that glimmered when she smiled, and long black lashes. Her teeth were wet pearls. Everyday, she smiled, and he nodded. But he never got the courage to talk with her. But one day, last spring, he did something quite out-of-the-ordinary and stopped in the doorway to say hello. He tried to talk but he didn’t know how to start the conversation. What does a girl like that talk about? He stuttered and shifted his feet. She was very nice, and patient with him. “You want to tell me something,” she asked. He did want to tell her something. He definitely did. But he wasn’t sure that was appropriate. He wanted to ask her out. He wanted to know who she was, what she did when she left work, who she met, if she had a family. He wanted to kiss her, and much, much more. He didn’t love her. He was quite sure about that, because every time he thought about her, he also thought about the barber’s daughter. Then the most extraordinary thing happened that day. She smiled salaciously at him, hiked up her skirt, so that he could see her black garter belt, her creamy thighs, and her shaved pussy (she wasn’t wearing panties), hopped up onto the scanner and photocopied her fanny. She hopped off, kissed the photo, leaving a pinkish, sticky print of her lips, and scrawled in the corner—‘to my friend, Conrad. XX’ She handed it to him, smiled, and waved at him, wiggling her fingers, as he nodded, cleared his throat, and walked away, staring at the upside down image of her crotch. Now, he just nods when he walks by. That was the last time something interesting happened to Conrad, unless one counts the times he spends every evening in the barbershop, when the barber’s daughter shaves him. They talk a little, but their relationship is limited to the shop, the twenty minutes it takes to shave him every evening with a hot towel soak, and a massage, and the forty minutes every second Friday when she cuts his hair. 

Conrad lived an ordinary life.

He was thinking this one morning as he lay in bed. The gray winter sun leached through the curtains of his bedroom. It was irritating and felt too warm on his flesh. He tried to rollover but there was something wrong—he could barely move, and felt rather bloated. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling but his vision was blurred—distorted. There were sixteen lamps there when there was usually only one. And he had six arms and legs, flailing above him—but they were not his arms and legs—they were thin, long, thorny, insect appendages. He tried to blink but he could not blink. He tried to rub his eyes and two long feelers loomed over him and stroked his head, drawing a molasses like snot from the incisors and extensions that made up his mouth. He tried to sit up and get a better look at his body, at his hard crustacean like midsection, and thorax, but he only twitched and wiggled. His folded wings flinched underneath him. He had no control over these things, these limbs, or appendages that flailed above him. He screamed, but nothing came out, except a gargled screech that drowned in his throat. He panicked, twitched, and writhed in his bed. Conrad was a cockroach. I’m a cockroach, he croaked. I’m a cockroach. The sounds coming out his mouth were incoherent.

Just then, he heard his sister’s voice calling from the kitchen. He gasped—Oh, no! he thought. He tried to yell—Jules! Jules! Don’t come in! I’ll be out in a minute! But his voice only rattled. He looked at the door and tried to focus with his bug-eyes. To his relief, the key was still in the door. It was locked. The doorknob jiggled. His sister called—Conrad! Breakfast. This is so unlike you.” The knob jiggled. “Are you ill?” She asked. He yelled back—Jules wait! Give me a minute, I’m not decent! But again, his voice died in his throat. Somewhere beneath the hard shell that was his skin, his heart pounded. If it was a heart he suddenly thought? “Open this door, right now, Conrad! You’re scaring me. Are you ok? Are you ill?” The doorknob jiggled. Conrad knew that all she had to do was use one of her fingernail files to slide the key out and jiggle the knob at the same time if she really wanted to get in. “Conrad, Conrad, I’m coming in. Do you hear me?” Conrad screeched. He heard her footsteps move away from the door and the voices of his family in the kitchen. The walls were very thin. What to do he thought, in a writhing panic, what to do? They will surely kill me if they see me like this. He squirmed in his bed, the sheets dampening with slime beneath him. I must get on my feet if I can, and hide under the bed. Besides, the sun was burning his eyes, and giving him a piercing headache. He struggled and willed himself to flip over and scurry under the bed (though it was rather cramped) just as the key fell—the ring of the impact on the hardwood floor resonating in his highly sensitive roach-antennae. He lay flat under the bed, hoping none of his thorny appendages were sticking out when she came in. The door creaked, swinging slowly open, and he could see Jules’ slippers step into the room…


End file.
